Watching your favorite TV show a million times isn't compulsive. It's a comfort binge.

The comfort binge is here to make you feel good. Let it do the work.


Imagine a day where you have nothing better to do. Your bed is made, your bathroom counters are wiped. There’s food in the fridge and your calendar is completely devoid of obligations both work and social. In front of you, a television. You’re not going to watch anything new today. You don’t want to sit through a movie. That would give you too much to think about. 

What TV show do you put on?

The TV show people turn to in their coziest, laziest, or most bored moments is their Comfort Binge. Engaging in the comfort binge can barely be classified as seeking entertainment, it’s more of an attempt to let familiar voices, beats, and plots flow through pre-made grooves on an exhausted brain. The comfort binge is about minimizing effort while maximizing pleasure, and while some people’s comfort binges might not seem obvious, most of them are fairly easy to identify. 

Engaging in the comfort binge can barely be classified as seeking entertainment.

Parks & Recreation is a classic comfort binge show. So is The Office and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Mike Schur might be the king of writing comfort binge shows). These shows are light and funny, with each micro-plot satisfied in 30 minutes flat. The characters are archetypes of people most watchers are friends with, or want to be friends with. It’s beyond easy to put on one of these shows and wind up, at the end of four hours, horizontal on a couch, half-watching and half-living in the outlandish-yet-relatable realities of their universes. 

Others opt for something else from their comfort binges. Avatar: The Last Airbender is a common response among a certain crowd of twentysomethings when asked what they watch for comfort. Avatar in particular shares a lot in common with classic comfort binge shows, like its charming characters and small-to-big picture plotting, but there’s something special about choosing an animated show for a comfort binge. It’s transportive, reminiscent of sugary cereals and Saturday morning cartoons. Steven Universe is another option in this category. Or consider, Star Wars Rebels

Rarer though is the comfort binge that is designed to be just barely watched, the kind of show one puts on when a nap is incoming, or right before bedtime. This is the white noise comfort binge, the one that has been watched so often it has a quality that is not quite soporific, but definitely half-ignorable. Shows like The Twilight Zone, and...well, really just The Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone is a surprisingly common comfort/sleepy binge. There’s something about the black and white palette, the slightly fuzzy audio quality, and the clipped, old-timey American accents that make the show feel outside of time (you might even say of another dimension). Its plots are so well-known and digestible that one only needs to catch the first five minutes to recall exactly which episode is on. That guy in the box? He’s a toy. The daughter with the robot maids? She’s a robot, too. That darkness in the sky? It’s a metaphor for racism that got past the censors. 

All of these shows share certain traits in common. They’re predictable, they’re not too heavy, and they don’t rely on shocks or twists to keep you interested (well, The Twilight Zone loves twists but, as mentioned before, everyone knows them by now). They’re not out to fuck with you. No one comfort binges Westworld

Comfort binging is about swaddling oneself in things that feel good. They’re a great go-to when the constant scrolling through streaming options starts to get more annoying than fun, or when the pressure of making a single choice is all it would take to ruin your Saturday. It’s OK to have a comfort binge. It’s possible that in this fast-paced, overstimulating world, a comfort binge show is part of a necessary arsenal used to combat fatigue in the face of chaos.

Embrace your comfort binge. Don't let anyone make fun of it. Comfort binging is self-care as much as face masks or bubble baths, and depending on your streaming service subscription deals they cost a lot less. It's 2019 and everyone is tired. It's OK to let the comfort binge take the wheel. At least for a season or two. 

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